How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
How does a global organization use Digital Asset Management?
What are the biggest challenges and successes you have seen with DAM?
What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I am Henrik de Gyor. Today I am speaking with Miles Rohan.
Miles, how are you? Miles Rohan: [0:10] I am well, Henrik. Thank you for having me. Henrik: [0:12] Miles, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management? Miles: [0:15] : I am Director of Digital Asset Management at Nickelodeon, specifically
for non-broadcast assets. I generally say things that do not move. We
do not deal with video assets. That is a whole separate can of worms. Henrik: [0:29] How does a global organization use Digital Asset Management? Miles: [0:32] The need for Digital Asset Management at Nickelodeon grew out
of a need to securely distribute digital assets to licensing partners, marketing
partners, as well as internally, to various departments around the world. It grew
out of that. Essentially they are organized by different properties or brands.
Different people can access them. Henrik: [0:58] Miles, what are the biggest challenges and successes with Digital
Asset Management? Miles: [1:02] One of the biggest challenges was user adoption. In the early days,
at least, there was a real reluctance to using it. People like having assets on the
desktop or on their server. But over the years we have overcome that. [1:14] I
think, also, security has always been a challenge. We have a lot of different use
cases for a very robust security, a very nimble security, so those are certainly
challenges.
[1:26] As far as successes, well, it was a challenge. I think user adoption was also
a success, because we went from printing physical guides and mailing them
around the world to ceasing, essentially, printing and no longer shipping guides
around the world. Everything was purely digital. I think getting people into a
mindset of sharing assets because they can be securely shared, has also been
a success. Henrik: [1:52] Great. What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals
and people aspiring to be DAM professionals? Miles: [1:57] I think it is important to realize that, I think, DAM is really around us
at all times now, whereas 10 years ago that may not have been the case. Now, I
think DAM is…if you are on iTunes or Netflix or Amazon, these are all examples
of DAM that I think aspiring people should be paying attention to, the because
in a lot of cases, they are doing DAM well. [2:23] I think those types of systems
will certainly influence non-consumer-facing, internal-only DAM. I tell everyone,
and then I am also, obviously, metadata is key in consistency and controlled
vocabularies. Never underestimate the text view. Henrik: [2:42] Thanks, Miles. Miles: [2:44] Thank you. Henrik: [2:45] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, logon to AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom and iTunes. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
How does an organization focused on cosmetics use Digital Asset Management?
What are the biggest challenges and successes the organization has with DAM?
What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:01] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Bjorn Pave. Bjorn,
how are you? Bjorn Pave: [0:11] I’m good. How are you, Henrik? Henrik: [0:12] Good. Bjorn, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management? Bjorn: [0:16] For us and for me, it began as a solution to a business problem.
We were looking how to distribute our assets globally. From there, it’s turned
into more of an interest for me, specifically, and some building of proficiency
in that area. It’s common for IT to be involved in Digital Asset Management and at Benefit,
our IT department plays a pretty close partnering role with the
business, so for us it was just to drive this project but also to fit this project in
with our business. [0:48] As for the basics, we are allied with our third phase of
this project. I’ve been less of a project manager these days. It’s become more
operational. I’ve become more of a strategic kind of partner with this project in
helping to progress and develop it and bring it to the next level. Henrik: [1:05] How does an organization focused on cosmetics use Digital Asset
Management? Bjorn: [1:10] Pretty much every company needs to be using some kind of DAM.
I mean, especially the ones that operate globally. Digital assets are everywhere.
Really, I don’t see much difference from a car company needing to distribute
assets than us, a cosmetics firm. [1:25] It’s about efficiency, when it comes down
to it. That said, we need to get our marketing materials out quickly to our marketing
teams around the world. We’re constantly under deadlines to do that.
We’re launching products and going to market quickly with products.
[1:42] To allow us to stay agile and efficient, we need some kind of thorough
system like that not as many companies would. Also, it goes without saying
that allowing those markets to find an easy way to search for those assets. Not
only the new ones to be able to find efficient the old material that they need to
find quickly.
[2:03] I’ll give you a quick example one of the big issues that we ran into for that
was just how to get these assets to the markets when they couldn’t find them
locally. They would send an email to San Francisco or go to our headquarters
and we would get the email from Taiwan, let’s say, the next day.
[2:22] We would reply to that email. Then, the next day after that, they would
have a blank or some method of gathering that asset. We’ve lost valuable time
there. Efficiency is just really important for us, in that sense, as well as most
companies. Henrik: [2:38] What are the biggest challenges and successes the organization
has had with DAM? Bjorn: [2:43] Which challenges that we’ve encountered? I’ll give you three main
ones that we came across. A big one was corporate buy in. I’ve seen their company
concerns. We’re owned by a larger firm that had a number of concerns.
Once we got it in place, it was managing expectations. Everybody wanted it.
People are clamoring to get to it. I’ll go back into those real briefly. [3:11] For the
corporate buy in, it was a challenge to get them to agree on spending money
outside of a budget cycle. We had a solution and we had problem to fix, but it
was nothing that we had planned far ahead. It came up that our current solution
wasn’t working, and we had a mandate from our CEO to go fix it.
[3:31] Getting the corporate buy in and getting that done and that leads into the
senior company concerns. We had to convince them that this was the right solution.
We were also faced with some other solutions that some of the other firms
in our group were using. That became quite a big sell project for our group.
[3:50] Managing the scope of it was key. We had a small pilot group that we
could roll out to. Now it’s turned into a much larger group. Now a lot of departments
are seeing an use for it. Managing those expectations is a challenge.
[4:06] As for our successes, I’m really pleased with the steering committee
packet we put together and the materials that they have at their disposal
through this project. Leveraging our vendor expertise was key. We partnered
with a great vendor. Cantor had professional services local to us, so it became
very easy for us to draw on those resources. They were a very close partner.
Their professional services team really helped us get to the next level with this.
[4:31] Finally for our successes, it was about celebrating the successes. We had
occasions to do so. The project came up during a global general managers’
meeting. All our global general managers were in San Francisco and complaining
about the lack of efficiency they were getting from our current solution,
which at the time was SharePoint. They wanted some other way of gathering
assets. That was the time that our CEO came to us.
[4:59] A year later we used that occasion to display what the solution was and
what we came up with. It was a great occasion to do so. Since then, we’ve had
other opportunities to tout our successes in that. Henrik: [5:12] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals? Bjorn: [5:16] For me this goes back to a bit of what I talked about at
Createasphere this year and what I hoped to get across there was no road
map for how to get into this. What were some key areas that really helped bring
me up to speed and bring us up to speed? Well, there was the LinkedIn group
that’s out there. There is that Digital Asset Managers group on LinkedIn, which
I found was a great location for talent and resources. [5:40] Other ways would
be engaging in DAM communities, podcasts and blogs like yours, Henrik, and
conferences. Those are great ways to find expertise. Why not learn from the
best? Why not take the people who are best in the field and draw on their intelligence?
That’s what we did there.
[5:57] Like I was saying before, leveraging the vendor was really helpful. If you’re
in a position where you can get vendor referrals who you can go out and speak
to, DAM managers at other firms that are similar to yours maybe not exactly,
but similar that’s really a big help. That was a help for us.
[6:13] As for becoming a professional, learn the software. Learn what’s out there
as far as the software offerings. Taking some time and digging deep into those
offerings is helpful. Learning taxonomy and metadata. They all have the core
commonalities, each of the software packages. To learn those essentials is really
important to being a DAM manager. Henrik: [6:38] Thanks, Bjorn. For more on this on other Digital Asset
Management topics, log on to AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast
is available on Audioboom, iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. If
you have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me at AnotherDAMblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
In May 2012, the ISO released a new standard regarding a Digital Object Identifier system. Can you tell us more about this new standard you helped develop?
Now, DAM systems (among many other Enterprise Content Management solutions) often use various kinds of Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) or Unique Identifiers (UID). How is this standard applicable across organizations and vendors currently using DOI or UID for a variety digital media?
What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:02] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Norman Paskin.
Norman, how are you? Norman Paskin: [0:10] I am fine. Thank you, Henrik. Thank you for the invitation. Henrik: [0:13] Norman, how are you involved with Digital Asset Management? Norman: [0:15] I guess my principal involvement is, I manage something called
the DOI system DOI is “digital object identifier” run through an organization
specifically setup to do that, the International DOI Foundation, which I was
involved in founding and I’m currently managing. [0:33] The reason for that is,
if you’re managing digital assets, the first thing you need to do is to be able to
refer to each asset unambiguously and precisely using a short string. Give it an
identifier. That’s what the system was conceived to do back in 1998. It came
out of the publishing industry, but it was deliberately developed with wide
applicability.
[0:56] If I drill down a little bit into that involvement, I think there are three sorts
of involvement I have with DAM. The first is using identifiers on digital networks,
what we call resolution. The DOI system actually uses the Handle System. That’s
Handle.net from CNRI , which is the Corporation for National Research Initiatives.
I do work with them, just to be clear, on a consultancy basis.
[1:25] The Handle System was developed by Bob Kahn, who was one of the
co-inventors of TCP/IP to be highly scalable, efficient, extensible, secure and so
forth. It’s ideal for persistent identifiers and managing unique identifiers. That’s
the first area of involvement.
[1:45] The second involvement with DAM is associating descriptions with those
identifiers. For us at management, obviously it’s not sufficient to have an identifier,
you’ve also got to say what that identifier refers to precisely and unambiguously,
particularly if someone else is going to be using it. That takes us into the
world of metadata, particularly for intellectual property assets or what people
call content.
[2:15] I’ve been involved with a number of initiatives dealing with metadata for
enabling persistence and interoperability for well over 15 years. The first was
the INDECS project, 1998. That set the scene for a number of later initiatives.
The most recent of those just starting is something called the Linked Content
Coalition, run by the European Publishers Council.
[2:44] What these all have in common is recognizing that in the digital world,
convergence means you can be dealing with many different types of things, different
content from many different communities with different sets of standards.
They may not have previously had to work with each other, but they now need a
common framework. Norman: [3:03] Also, what’s come out of that, I think, is recognizing that assets
as intellectual property are much more than digital objects. For example,
Beethoven’s “Fifth Symphony” is more than an MP3 file. It’s an underlying abstraction,
a creation with all sorts of rights that may be different from the specific
digital manifestation. People have investments in all sorts of different data
schemes, so the aim has to be to enable people to reuse what they have. That’s
part of the effort that we’ve been involved in.
[3:35] One of the things that’s come out of that is something called the
Vocabulary Mapping Framework, VMF. A fundamental basis of things like that is
a structured ontology approach, the same principle as behind the semantic web
and link data. What we’re offering with DOI is a tool to give you a set of data
which is both curated and managed to be reliable.
[4:00] Just to wrap, the third way I’m involved is in social infrastructures and
governance. The DOI Foundation operates as a federation of independent
agencies. We have a governance model and a set of policies and procedures. It
works very well. We’re very pleased with progress, although sometimes it seems
like herding cats. We have agencies from a number of sectors US, Europe,
China, Japan so very different views coming forward.
[4:27] Also in the social infrastructure area, I’ve been involved in a number of
standards activities. Most recently, ISO 26324, which is an effort to take the DOI
system and put it into an ISO framework.
[4:40] Technical involvement in identifiers, metadata, and governance that’s my
involvement. Henrik: [4:46] In May, 2012, the ISO, or International Standards Organization,
released a new standard regarding a digital object identifier system. Can you
tell us more about this new standard you helped develop? Norman: [4:58] Yes. I was the convener of the working group that did that, but
the DOI system, which has now been standardized, actually preceded the ISO
working process itself. In fact, the ISO standard 26324 is codifying what already
existed. [5:16] In the early days of the DOI system, 1998, we worked with ISBN,
the International Standard Book Number people. Through them, we came to
the attention of the ISO group involved in that whole topic of bibliographic
identifiers. They invited us to consider taking the DOI system and putting it
into an ISO standard to gain the advantages of international recognition and a
degree of autonomy and independence.
[5:43] The system that’s now being standardized is, in effect, the DOI system
as it was. The DOI system really took off in 2000. ISO got involved in 2004, a
number of years later. It finally passed as a standard in 2010, quite a number
of years after that. It’s actually only been published now, in May, 2012. The
reason for that delay is purely an ISO thing. They wanted to review all of their
generic registration authority contracts. We got rather caught up in that whole
framework.
[6:18] Seven and a half years from door to door, but in effect what IS O has done
is taken the DOI system and put it into the ISO framework. There’s been a lot of
advantages to that, by the way, from our point of view. In the working group, we
had a number of suggestions for how to improve the wording, for how to consider
in particular interoperability with other standards, make sure that was fully
recognized in the wording, and avoid some initial misunderstandings, I think,
that were about. Norman: [6:47] Which was that in some way, DOI was trying to replace existing
systems. In fact, that’s far from the case. Actually, we’ve encouraged the creation
of new registries and new sorts of identifier standards. We’ve also been
involved in new IS O standards like IS TC, which is a standard for textual abstractions,
and ISNI , the international standards and name identifier.
[7:11] It’s been quite a long story, but I think our involvement with IS O has all
been good. What it means for the community is, I don’t think the ISO standardization
makes a big deal of difference to people already using DOI . By the time
the standard was published, we’d already assigned 60 million DOI s. Clearly,
people weren’t waiting for the standard to come along to use it. But that was
actually a help in the standards process, the benefit of practical experience of
implementation of what worked.
[7:41] We were able to say, when we, for example, were talking about the metadata
standard that we wanted to associate, “In our experience this is what’s
practical. This may be a better design over here, but we have to deal with reality
at the moment.” That’s been quite a helpful process.
[8:00] ISO standardization is just one of a number of events that’s taken place
with DOI since we started in 2000. We’re quite pleased that we’re still around
after all this time and we haven’t had to make any U-turns. We seem to be getting
a lot of recognition. The publication of the standards actually generated
quite a bit of interest from people who may not have been aware of it before.
For example, this interview is a sign of that. Henrik: [8:25] Digital Asset Management systems, among other enterprise content
management solutions, often use various kinds of digital object identifiers,
or DOI s, or unique identifiers, UIDs. How is this standard applicable across organizations
and vendors currently using DOI or UIDs for a variety of digital media? Norman: [8:47] It’s a good question. I think I need to tease apart a couple of
the terms there. When people talk about digital object identifiers and imagine it
all in lower case, they’re using it generically. When they talk about it with capitalized
DOI , they’re specifically referring to the DOI system, which has got its
own set of rules, policies, and principles. DOI is a trademark, simply because we
wanted to preserve the consistency of the system for that reason. [9:15] If you
want to work with others to manage or you want to pass onto other parties in a
supply chain or you want to simply make available to third parties that you may
not yet know about, you want to simply make them discoverable, then you’ve
probably got to find a way of interoperating and ensuring persistence of your
identifiers.
[9:37] That’s where we come in. We offer a framework which is effectively out of
the box. It’s a shared infrastructure, both technical and social, with the benefits
of economy of scale. You can keep your own identifier system and your own
metadata, but put it into that framework. You can keep your own autonomy of
the community that you’re looking after, but take advantage of a system that’s
becoming increasingly widely known, standardized with standard tools.
[10:09] A couple of good examples. One of the earliest implementations of
DOI was something called CrossRef it’s all one word, CrossRef.org which uses
DOIs to link scholarly publishing articles. That’s a community of now, I think,
approaching 4,000 different publishers, but they have their own rules. The DOI
system, as they use it, is the same as anyone else would use the DOI system,
just the common rules of the road. Norman: [10:35] Another example is the Entertainment Identifier Registry, EIDR.org. They’re using DOI s in the movie assets, commercial television broadcasting area. Again, they’re using the same system technically, same social infrastructure,
but they also lay on top of that their own social infrastructure for their own
community and their own rules about what they cover.
[11:00] What the DOI system offers, I think, is an ability to not throw away what
you’ve already been using, but to make it more usable with other systems and
to make it persistent. Of course, in detail, we offer some common tools free of
charge, licensed to the Handle System for resolution, tools of the Vocabulary
Mapping Framework, some common technical infrastructure and so forth.
[11:23] But that’s not the most important thing. Anyone can build their own
infrastructure if they want to. I think what we offer really is a community, a very
large community of interest, greater together than people would be working on
their own. Henrik: [11:37] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals? Norman: [11:41] I’ve thought about this. I think a number of points, really.
Almost at the top of the list, I would say don’t reinvent the wheel. I don’t just
mean use DOI s. A lot of useful work has already been done. [11:51] When we
designed the DOI system, again, we didn’t reinvent the wheel. We used existing
components. I think what a lot of technical people don’t necessarily realize is
that things like ontologies and classification work in the ‘60s things like library
cataloguing tools, which people may consider to be rather old fashioned actually
solve an awful lot of problems about organization, information, and contextual
ontologies. Things like FRBR, which the libraries came up with some time
ago. That’s one point. Don’t reinvent the wheel.
[12:21] I would say also look beyond your immediate community. Digital convergence
means you can’t afford to think only about your immediate problems if
you’re going to have something that lasts and is extensible. I do realize there
is a tension there, of course. If you’re looking for cost justification, there is a
tendency to look first of all to your own community and secondly to be relatively
short term.
[12:44] A related point is, think for the long term. You’ve got to use a technology,
but don’t forget the possibilities for migration to other technologies. Don’t
forget things like thinking at the right level of abstraction, extensibility, and
scalability.
[12:58] A further point is, we often talk about persistence identifiers as being
around for a while and we often talk about interoperability. I think they’re two
sides of the same coin. Persistence is simply interoperability with the future. Norman: [13:12] I would say also something that I found running the social organizations
that I’ve been involved in for 15 years. It’s very easy to get involved
in arguments about definitions. That’s pointless. Don’t argue about definitions.
It’s futile.
[13:25] What you do need to do is try to be explicit. Clarify what you mean, and
understand what someone else means. They may have a legitimate reason for
thinking differently than you. Common terms, I think, like identifier, like stakeholders,
like community. When people use them, they often have a vested interest
or a shading towards their particular understanding of what that term means.
Try to understand where they’re coming from.
[13:55] The final thing, which is not my motto but was attributed to Einstein.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. Don’t assume
that the obvious solution is always the right one. Henrik: [14:07] Great points. Well, thanks, Norman. Norman: [14:09] Pleasure. Henrik: [14:11] For more on this and other Digital Asset Management topics, log
on to AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom,
iTunes and the Tech Podcast Network. If you have any comments or questions,
please feel free to email me at anotherdamblog@gmail.com. Thanks again.
How are you involved with Digital Asset Management?
Why does an international hotel chain use Digital Asset Management?
What advice would you like to share with DAM Professionals and people aspiring to become DAM Professionals?
Transcript:
Henrik de Gyor: [0:00] This is Another DAM Podcast about Digital Asset
Management. I’m Henrik de Gyor. Today I’m speaking with Steven Brier. Steven,
how are you? Steven Brier: [0:10] I’m just fine. How are you? Henrik: [0:12] Good. Steven, how are you involved with Digital Asset
Management? Steven: [0:15] I’m the Product Owner, for lack of a better term, of the Marriott
Digital Asset Management System, and several applications that leverage the
DAM to activate brand voice, and automate marketing and sales efforts for 11
different brands worldwide.
[0:34] In this role, I develop a strategy. I prioritize
the development. I manage all the internal and external resources. Whether that
be our development shop, advertising agencies and others. I serve as liaison
between the business and what we call the tools, which includes the DAM and
any of the other applications that link into the DAM. I also project manage any
integration efforts between other applications in the DAM which is extremely
important.
[1:05] We’ve made the DAM accessible through an API. That makes it much
easier for other applications to tap into those assets that live there, further
gleaning and pulling value out of those assets. Henrik: [1:23] Why does an international hotel chain use Digital Asset
Management? Steven: [1:28] Marriott uses it to secure the investment that’s made in digital
assets from a property standpoint and also, from a corporate standpoint.
Whether we have assets for brand and brand marketing, human resources, internal
communications, we use the DAM to secure that investment. Also, to glean
the maximum value we can out of those assets.
[1:56] Before we actually had this
thing, assets were stored on servers in hard drives and disks. You really couldn’t
access them, not in a global fashion, and certainly not even a cross department
way. This now allows people to use these assets, and to actually get them out
to people.
[2:18] The reason why we initially built it was to help build our brands. We were
going to a strategy of brand distinction. We really needed to categorize assets
that would be used specifically for each brand and not cross pollinate, if you will,
so that we could get a distinction.
[2:40] I guess the final thing you could say is just to save money, because they’re
specific. We collapsed nine different databases around the world, and I wouldn’t
even say that was all of them.
[2:56] We did that in a formalized way, but then I think there have been other
teams, groups, and organizations throughout Marriott who have since found our
tool and added their assets to the system, as well. Henrik: [3:12] What advice would you like to share with DAM professionals and
people aspiring to become DAM professionals? Steven: [3:18] The first thing is, if you’re going to be taking something on like
this, you’ve got to have some thick skin, [laughs] because it’s very sensitive.
Everyone has their own ideas how it should be done, and then they’re very
protective as to their assets and the control of those assets.
[3:38] In large corporations like Marriott it is, as I like to say, a house to house battle. It’s pretty rare that you see a company that scopes out to centrally fund an enterprise like
solution, because many times it’s millions of dollars, you have to fight through all
of the systems, and there are misunderstandings.
[4:00] A way that we were able to do it was we built small. We proved it out, the
concept to do a certain set of tasks, or to solve certain problems. Then, as we
proved that out, we started to evangelize the system to build that support and
get others to take ownership of their slice of the pie.
[4:24] In a sense, I guess you should be a salesperson, too. That’s not always
something that people in this position really aspire to or have the skillset to do,
but it’s just a matter of getting out, talking to people, and helping paint the picture
for them so they can see what the Digital Asset Management System can
do for their group, and what centralization of that, the value of centralization,
can have to their organization.
[4:57] The other thing is just to be open and solicit feedback, even criticism and
complaints. This is somewhere all the good ideas for our system have come. I
always like to say that, when people stop complaining, [laughs] I don’t have a
healthy system, because it means people are starting to disengage.
[5:15] I have really fostered this open door policy so that people understand that
if they have an issue with the system, if it can be solved. We’re perfectly willing
to do that. Henrik: [5:28] Allowing people to complain, but taking those complaints and
seeing what challenges can be resolved to make the system better. That’s a
great piece of advice there as well. Steven: [5:36] Right. Henrik: [5:38] Thanks Steven. Steven: [5:39] You are quite welcome. Henrik: [5:42] For more on Digital Asset Management log onto AnotherDAMblog.com. Another DAM Podcast is available on Audioboom, Blubrry, iTunes, and the Tech Podcast Network. Thanks again.
Another DAM Podcast 